Assessment of Radioactive Waste Management at the Portsmouth Site – March 2020

April 2020

Assessment of Radioactive Waste Management at the Portsmouth Site

This assessment is in response to the Deputy Secretary of Energy’s July 9, 2019, memorandum directing the Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) to undertake a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-wide assessment of the procedures and practices for packaging and shipping radioactive waste. The assessment activities focused on waste management performance at the Portsmouth Site, which is operated by the management and operating contractors, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, LLC (FBP) and Mid-America Conversion Services, LLC (MCS). Waste management activities include characterizing, packaging, and shipping low-level waste (LLW) and mixed low-level waste (MLLW) for disposal. Neither contractor generates transuranic waste. The assessment team, identified in Appendix A, examined a sample of waste generator operations representing about 80% of the total waste (by volume) shipped to four disposal facilities, mostly the DOE Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). FBP’s diverse control strategy (defense-in-depth) for its waste management processes, from the generator to packaging, is illustrated in Appendix B.